Just saw the thread now - and so I'm answering the original question.
I don't know if he was a real person. There's no historical evidence for his existence as there's no evidence for his non existence. There might have been a real person, there might have been several persons being mashed into one legendary figure once the tales made their rounds on the trade routes or there might have been nothing at all.
All the Roman authors, as far as their accounts haven't been forged at a later time, only retell what christians claimed to be their origin. And that is mainly the problem when dealing with ancient authors and historians. They only gave an account of what they heard. They didn't do checks and rechecks like we do today. That's what most people don't understand.
A good example may be the account of Plini the Younger about the outbreak of Mount Vesuvius. We can check the veracity of that account archeologically as well as geologically. As opposed to accounts that only rely on oral history so to speak.
I don't know if he was a real person. There's no historical evidence for his existence as there's no evidence for his non existence. There might have been a real person, there might have been several persons being mashed into one legendary figure once the tales made their rounds on the trade routes or there might have been nothing at all.
All the Roman authors, as far as their accounts haven't been forged at a later time, only retell what christians claimed to be their origin. And that is mainly the problem when dealing with ancient authors and historians. They only gave an account of what they heard. They didn't do checks and rechecks like we do today. That's what most people don't understand.
A good example may be the account of Plini the Younger about the outbreak of Mount Vesuvius. We can check the veracity of that account archeologically as well as geologically. As opposed to accounts that only rely on oral history so to speak.
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